Let’s look at some of the battles and warfare between the Russians and Steppe people during the long period during which the balance began to shift away from the Steppe armies and towards the settled people.

The tide begins to turn 1480, The Great Stand on the Ugra:

Ivan III became emboldened to stop paying tribute to the Great Horde. In 1480 Akhmat, khan of the Great horde advanced his Steppe Army towards Moscow to enforce the tribute. The Russians dug in to defend the fords of the Ugra River against the Horde.

The Horde tried multiple skirmishes to try to force the fords of the Ugra, but were turned back by Russian cannon and harquebuses at every attempt.

Then the two armies glared at and skirmished with each other all summer long. The Russians were not going to leave their defenses and mount an attack and the Horde feared to assault across the narrow fords, protected by defenses and guns.

Eventually, winter approached, and both sides withdrew without fighting a major battle. This was known as “The Great Stand on the Ugra”, and to the Russians it was the turning point when they ‘threw off the Tatar yoke’.

The Russians hang on 1480-1572:

Although the Russians had stopped paying tribute, and achieved independence, they were still hard pressed and on the defensive for a long time.

In 1507 and 1514 the Tatars raided into Russia. In 1521 the Tatars ravage the outskirts of Moscow for two weeks with 50,000 men.

In about 1533, the Russians built the “Abatis” defensive line south of the Oka river to protect against the Tatars.

Between 1533 and 1547 there are over twenty large Tatar raids on the frontier, some of which breach the Abatis line.

In 1555, 1562, 1564, 1565, the Khan leads large armies in major raids into Russia.

In 1571, an army 120,000 strong of Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks, broke through all the defensive lines and reached Moscow, which was crowded by thousands of refugees fleeing before the Steppe horde. Moscow was burnt to the ground with estimates of 80,000 Russian casualties and 150,000 Russians taken as slaves.

At this point, things looked pretty bleak for the Russians. The Tatars, however, returned to the Steppe for the winter, planning to come back the next summer and finish the conquest of Russia once and for all.

Decisive Battle – Molodi, 1572:

In 1572 Devlet Giray, khan of the Crimean horde and his Turkish allies again rode into Russia with 120,000 men. They were met by Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky and Prince Dmitriy Khvorostinin commanding 60,000 Russians at Molodi, about 40 miles south of Moscow.

The Russians had two relatively new factors deployed in this battle. One was large numbers of “Streltzi”, Russia’s first standing army, originating about 1550, armed with matchlock muskets, and deployed at Molodi in large numbers. The Streltzi had also constructed “Gulay Gorod” which were large portable wooden walls with cannon and musket ports, which could be moved by man power and latched together to create a mobile fortress.

The battle lasted for 7 days. The Tatars attacked and destroyed 3,000 Russian troops caught outside the Gulay Gorod, but the rest of the Russians were inside their mobile fort and unleashed a continuous fire while slowly moving the entire fortress in a slow retreat. On day 7, the Tatars launched an all out assault. They tried to drag down or tip over the wooden walls forming the Gulay Gorod, taking massive casualties. While they were occupied, a large force of Russians exited unobserved out the rear of the fortress, circled round the Tatars, and then the Russians both inside and outside the fort (now pretty desperate due to running low on food and ammunition) launched a two prong charge against the Tatars. The Steppe army was routed with great losses. It is said that only 20,000 Tatars returned to the Crimea.

Russian advance, 1572-1783:

The battle of Molodi might have marked a turning point in the long conflict between the Russians and the Steppe armies, but for 100 years it was not so easy to see that.

In 1591, Russian cannon stopped another Tatar raid at a line of fortifications called the “Bank Line”.

In 1614, the Tatars raided to within sight of Moscow again. In 1633 30,000 Tatars broke through the Abatis and Bank lines of fortifications raiding extensively into Russia and taking thousands of slaves, but this was the last deep raid into Russia.

In 1644 and 1645 the Tatars raided extensively in Southern Russian territories, taking 16,000 slaves (mostly sold to the Turks to man the galleys for a war against Venice).

In 1650, the Russians pushed forward 300km south of the Abatis Line and built the Belgorod line of forts.

In 1680 the Russians pushed south again and built the Izium Line of Forts within 150 km of the Black Sea.

In 1687-1689 The Russians tried to invade Crimea, but failed.

In 1769, the last big Tatar raid into Southern Russian territories captured thousands of slaves

In 1774 Russia compelled Crimea to become a vassal state.

In 1783 Russia annexed Crimea.

It took the Russians 300 years from breaking free of the Tatar yoke to finally defeating the Steppe Hordes as a threat. The combination of forts and guns is what allowed it. Even though the Tatars had guns as well (generally supplied by their Turkish allies), forts defended by guns could not easily be taken, and the need to haul cannon around the steppe and resupply with ammunition greatly reduced the advantage of extreme mobility which Steppe Armies had enjoyed in the pre-gunpowder era.

Sources: http://www.prlib.ru/en-us/History/Pages/Item.aspx?itemid=315 www.pravoslavie.ru/english/47454.htm mapwalk2013.clevelandhistory.org/great-stand-on-the-ugra-river/ www.xenophon-mil.org/rusarmy/streltzi.htm www.abebooks.com/9785511014043/Battle-Molodi.../plp en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Crimean_Wars